I highly recommend a visit to the Palace Museum. I liked it much better than the Taipei National Museum that’s full of very old things – too many of the same after a while for a philistine like me.
The Hong Kong Palace Museum has a beautiful curated selection of modern and old things, and none I’ve seen before in Beijing nor Taipei.
In terms of the visitor’s journey, I think they tried a little too hard with creating the “breathing space” like the Forbidden City, at every new room/gallery, there are modern acryllic cut Chinese motifs to create a spatial divide. If you’ve visited the Forbidden City you would have noticed that every open courtyard space leads into a different hall, apart from fengshui and astrological considerations, they were built with the cadence of breathing 呼吸, like a pair of lungs expanding and collapsing, breathing life into the Forbidden City.
A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to have a private tour with Diana Laoshi. Wild China has the best tours to learn all about the weird and wonderful things in China, and I highly recommend it once borders have opened and we can live with Covid and put the paranoia and fear behind us.
The collection of big and small things are wonderful. There’s modern innovation and antiquity. Toddler was obsessed with a mango teapot (above) – everyone should have a mango teapot.
I would have loved to spend more time in each gallery, but it’s not always possible with the toddler.
